There was shock, disbelief and tears of joy for the friends, family and
supporters of critically ill prisoner Brendan Lillis on Thursday when
news emerged that their campaign had succeeded in securing his freedom
-- and a rare victory against state brutality in the North of Ireland.

There was shock, disbelief and tears of joy for the friends, family and
supporters of critically ill prisoner Brendan Lillis on Thursday when
news emerged that their campaign had succeeded in securing his freedom
-- and a rare victory against state brutality in the North of Ireland.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
have presented proposals for a Eurozone government to carry out
centralised European decision making on economic matters and extract a
new tax on all financial transactions within the Eurozone.

A new report into the Police Ombudsman’s office in the North has
revealed that it is routinely engaging in the cover-up of key
intelligence details and censoring its own reports in order to bolster
the reputation of the PSNI police and its predecessor, the RUC.

As the figure for arrests heads towards 3,000 and the British media
follow the progress through the courts of the people charged, David
Cameron has seized on the rioting, murder and arson as a golden
opportunity to advance his personal agenda.

The Life Sentence Review Commissioners sat yesterday [Friday] to
consider the case of critically ill internee Brendan Lillis, who remains
under the watch of prison warders at a hospital in Belfast following his
transfer from notorious Maghaberry jail earlier this week.

A number of members of the Republican Network for Unity (RNU) group
dramatically stormed the Alliance Party’s headquarters in south Belfast
on Thursday morning in protest at party leader David Ford’s handling of
the situation at Maghaberry jail.

Members of the two main nationalist parties in the North are to join the
partner of critically ill prisoner Brendan Lillis in a meeting with the
Six-County Justice Minister later today [Wednesday] to plead for his
release from Maghaberry jail on compassionate grounds.

Senator David Norris yesterday withdrew his candidacy from the
26-County presidential election in the autumn after a scandal erupted
over his intervention on behalf of an Israeli man, a former lover, who
was convicted of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy in 1992.